Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of taking steps to provide more extra-curricular services and activities before and after the school day.

The Department is committed to ensuring young people have access to high-quality extra-curricular opportunities during the school day as well as before and after.

The Department has introduced a minimum expectation on the length of the school week of 32.5 hours (the current average) for all state-funded, mainstream schools. The Department expects all state-funded mainstream schools to work towards meeting this expectation by September 2023 at the latest. The Department wants to bring all schools in line with the current average as a minimum.

In addition, before and after school activities can provide wraparound childcare, which is important for removing barriers for and supporting parents to work. The Department strongly encourages all schools to offer before and after school provision for their pupils. Schools should not refuse a request from parents to provide wraparound childcare without a reasonable justification, such as lack of demand.

The Department supports a range of initiatives to expand access to high-quality extra-curricular activities through schools, such as:

• working with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to offer the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award to all state secondary schools in England
• working in partnership with the Ministry of Defence to help achieve the Government ambition of having 60,000 cadets in school cadet units by 2024
• investing in phase 3 of the Opening School Facilities programme which will see a national provider support schools to open their facilities in the evening’s, weekend’s and during the holidays to increase opportunities for young people to get active outside of the school day
• investing over £200 million a year in our Holiday Activities and Food programme providing free holiday club places to children on benefits-related free school meals, as well as other vulnerable children, giving them a chance to enjoy extra-curricular activities and healthy meals during the longer school holidays
• investing up to £24 million to continue our national schools breakfast programme until July 2023
• funding music, arts and heritage, which supports teaching within the curriculum and co and extra-curricular activities. The Department has invested over £714 million between 2016 and 2022 on a diverse range of music and arts programmes, over and above core school budgets, helping to ensure pupils of all backgrounds can benefit from them
• investing around £115 million per annum in cultural education over three years to 2025, through our music, arts and heritage programmes. In June, the Department also announced an additional £25 million capital funding for musical instruments.

The Department is also working with DCMS to help schools ensure their pupils are getting the most out of the National Youth Guarantee, which expands access to youth provision and was announced as part of the Youth Review.